🌊 Launching the Ocean Community Award Accelerator 2025

At Ocean Community, we believe that innovation and collaboration are key to driving a more sustainable future for our oceans. Through the Ocean Community Challenge, we bring forward fresh ideas from changemakers around the world. Now, with the Ocean Community Award Accelerator (OCAA25), we’re taking the next step: selecting 5 of the 10 finalists from the challenge to continue to enable their solutions towards impact.

OCAA25 sets sail this September and runs until the end of November 2025. This three-month program is designed to support the awarded teams of the Ocean Community Challenge as they continue to transform their innovative ideas into scalable solutions for the sustainable blue economy.

The accelerator program includes:

• Tailored mentorship with industry leaders and advisors

• Master classes in innovation strategies and entrepreneurship

• Pitch practice to sharpen storytelling and investor readiness

• Networking opportunities with experts, investors, and peers in the blue economy space

• Intra-cohort collaborative opportunities between the awarded teams' cohort

  
  

Through this support, each team will refine its market approach, strengthen its positioning, and connect with the right stakeholders to evolve.

There is no fee for participation; however, the teams are encouraged to join Ocean Community as Business Partners & Associates, which last year attracted Aquaponics Iberia, VesselX and Kidemis to join our community partner ecosystem. (Annual fee for start-ups is 100€).

Meet the 2025 Cohort

We’re proud to introduce the five startups selected for OCAA25:

• Slowmill – Developing innovative, resilient, and affordable technology to generate clean electricity from ocean waves through a wave energy converter (WEC).

• Nutricape – Designing nano-encapsulated nutrient delivery systems for aquaculture, currently focusing on improving shrimp feed efficiency.

• SmartDry Dredging – Revolutionising dredging from a non-sustainable contaminant-moving process into a sustainable method that removes contamination while creating materials for circular economy use.

• Savearth – Creating an AI-powered, plug-and-play solution to help hotels monitor, optimise, and reduce water consumption in guest showers, tackling one of hospitality’s biggest sustainability challenges.

• WeavAir – Offering an integrated hardware and software platform for ports to optimise operations, reduce environmental impact, and improve profitability with advanced monitoring, diagnostics, and decision-support tools.

  
  

  

Small Steps, Meaningful Impact

While each startup tackles different challenges, they all share one vision: building a healthier, more resilient ocean economy. Together, these teams are taking important steps toward sustainability — proving that small, focused actions can make a real difference.

We look forward to sharing their progress throughout the accelerator journey.

Stay tuned for more updates from OCAA25!